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Forbes
31-07-2025
- Science
- Forbes
Going Wild (Again): Feral Rabbits In Australia Evolve New Morphologies
Is 'feralization' a process of recapitulating what domesticated animals once looked like and once were? How does domestication change wild animals? When domesticated animals return to a wild state, is this 'feralization' a process of recapitulating what these animals once looked like and once were? Even Charles Darwin pondered the effects of domestication in his book, The variation of animals and plants under domestication, initially published in 1869 (ref). But first, let's understand a little better about feralization: what is it? 'Feralization is the process by which domestic animals become established in an environment without purposeful assistance from humans,' explained the study's lead author, evolutionary biologist Emma Sherratt, an Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide, where she specializes in macroevolution and morphometric methods. This study was part of Professor Sherratt's ARC Future Fellowship. To do this study, Professor Sherratt collaborated with a team of international experts to assess the body sizes and skull shapes of domesticated, feral and wild rabbits. Their study revealed that when domesticated rabbit breeds return to the wild and feralize, they do not simply revert to their wild form – instead, they undergo distinct, novel anatomical changes. 'While you might expect that a feral animal would revert to body types seen in wild populations, we found that feral rabbits' body-size and skull-shape range is somewhere between wild and domestic rabbits, but also overlaps with them in large parts,' Professor Sherratt briefly explained. Australia's feral rabbits are descendants of rabbits that newly arriving European colonists brought with them to supply meat and fur. The European rabbit, Oryctolagus cuniculus, or coney, is originally native to the Iberian Peninsula and southwestern France, but currently has an almost global presence. They live in grasslands and are herbivorous, mainly eating grasses and leaves, though they consume all sorts of things, including a variety of berries and even food crops, making them a persistent and formidable agricultural pest. They dig burrows to live in and produce many litters of blind and helpless offspring, known as kits or kittens, every year. The European rabbit is the only rabbit species that has been widely domesticated for meat, fur, wool, or as a pet, so all domesticated rabbits belong to the same species. Paradoxically, this rabbit species is endangered in its native range, despite being an invasive pest just about everywhere else. The goal of Professor Sherratt and collaborators' study was to measure and characterize the morphological differences of the European rabbit skull in wild, feral and domestic animals sampled globally, and contrast those measurements with other rabbit species. To do this, they sampled 912 rabbit specimens held by natural history museums or collected by invasive species control programs. They included wild individuals collected in their contemporary native range in Spain, Portugal and southwestern France, along with independent feral populations and domestic rabbits collected from 20 different worldwide locations (countries, territories, islands). Professor Sherratt and collaborators used well-established scientific methods to quantify shape and size variation in the skull, and to assess size-related (allometric) shape variations that this species acquired through several hundred years of domestication and feralization. Why focus specifically on these animals' skull shapes and sizes? What do these dimensions tell you? '[W]e focus on skull shape because it tells us how animals interact with their environment, from feeding, sensing and even how they move,' Professor Sherratt replied. Professor Sherratt and collaborators examined whether domestic rabbits have predictable skull proportions – relatively shorter face length and smaller braincase size, which are hypothesized to be part of 'domestication syndrome' – and whether feralization has resulted in a reversion to the original wild form. Finally, they compared their measurements to an existing dataset of 24 rabbit species that included representatives of all 11 modern rabbit genera to provide an evolutionary baseline of morphological changes with which to compare wild, feral and domesticated rabbits. Not surprisingly, Professor Sherratt and collaborators discovered that the 121 domesticated study rabbits showed much more variation in skull shape and size than do wild and feral rabbits, with substantial shape differences (figure 1A,B), which is attributed in part to their greater diversity in body size (figure 1C). Why is there so much variation in feral rabbits' skulls? To answer this, Professor Sherratt and collaborators investigated several hypotheses regarding the feralization process. 'Exposure to different environments and predators in introduced ranges may drive rabbit populations to evolve different traits that help them survive in novel environments, as has been shown in other species,' proposed Professor Sherratt. 'Alternatively, rabbits may be able to express more trait plasticity in environments with fewer evolutionary pressures,' Professor Sherratt continued. 'In particular, relaxed functional demands in habitats that are free of large predators, such as Australia and New Zealand, might drive body size variation, which we know drives cranial shape variation in introduced rabbits.' Does the process of feralization follow a precise, predictable pathway? 'Because the range is so variable and sometimes like neither wild nor domestic, feralization in rabbits is not morphologically predictable if extrapolated from the wild or the domestic stock,' Professor Sherratt replied. What surprised you most about this study's findings? 'That feral rabbits can get so big!" replied Professor Sherratt in email. 'Almost double the mass of one from southern Spain.' Why don't rabbits show as much morphological diversity as dogs or cats? For example, a recent study (ref) found that dogs and cats have both been selected to have short faces, so why isn't this seen in rabbits? 'We think this is because the long face of rabbits is a biomechanical necessity for this species,' explained Professor Sherratt in email. 'Important for herbivores.' Why is this research so important? 'Understanding how animals change when they become feral and invade new habitats helps us to predict what effect other invasive animals will have on our environment, and how we may mitigate their success.' What's next? 'Our next paper will look at the environmental factors that have influenced the diversity of skull shapes in Australia,' Professor Sherratt replied in email. '[For example], we have found that temperatures and precipitation have a lot of influence on the traits we see.' Source: Emma Sherratt, Christine Böhmer, Cécile Callou, Thomas J. Nelson, Rishab Pillai, Irina Ruf, Thomas J. Sanger, Julia Schaar, Kévin Le Verger, Brian Kraatz and Madeleine Geiger (2025). From wild to domestic and in between: how domestication and feralization changed the morphology of rabbits, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 292:20251150 | doi:10.1098/rspb.2025.1150 © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tumblr | Twitter
The Australian
31-07-2025
- Business
- The Australian
ASIO chief exposes shocking cost of foreign spying on Australia
Foreign espionage is costing the Australian economy at least $12.5bn a year, with the ASIO boss warning against complacency against the 'real, present and costly danger'. The director-general of security Mike Burgess has for the first time publicly put a dollar figure on what foreign spies are costing Australia and espionage remains one of the country's principal security concerns. 'This is critical because I believe that we need to wake up to the cost of espionage – which is more than just financial,' he said in the annual Hawke Lecture at the University of Adelaide on Thursday night. 'We need to understand espionage is not some quaint, romantic fiction; it's a real, present and costly danger.' ASIO director-general Mike Burgess issued his warning delivering the annual Hawke Lecture at Adelaide University. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman Mr Burgess released a new report that ASIO developed with the Australian Institute of Criminology, to try to count the cost of espionage. The report found espionage cost the Australian economy at least $12.5bn in the 2023-2024 financial year, an estimate Mr Burgess called 'conservative'. 'This includes the direct costs of known espionage incidents, such as the state-sponsored theft of intellectual property, as well as the indirect costs of countering and responding,' he said. 'As just one example, the Institute estimates foreign cyber spies stole nearly $2bn of trade secrets and intellectual property from Australian companies and businesses in 2023-24. 'The report includes a case study where spies hacked into the computer network of a major Australian exporter, making off with commercially sensitive information. 'The theft gave the foreign country a significant advantage in subsequent contract negotiations, costing Australia hundreds of millions of dollars.' Mr Burgess said too many were complacent about the cost of espionage and urged 'all parts of our system – public and private, federal, state and local – to recognise the threat'. 'I've lost count of the number of times senior officials and executives have privately downplayed the impacts of espionage,' he said. 'I've watched corporate leaders literally shrug their shoulders when told their networks are compromised. 'I've heard sensible security measures such as taking burner phones to high-risk countries described as unreasonable inconveniences. 'Most recently, a trade official told ASIO there's no way the Chinese intelligence services would have any interest in his organisation's people and premises in China.' Russia, led by President Vladimir Putin, was singled out by ASIO boss Mike Burgess. Picture: NewsWire / POOL / AFP / Mikhail Metzel He again listed China, Russia and Iran as three of the main nations behind espionage in Australia and said Russia remained 'a persistent and aggressive espionage threat'. 'Last year, two Russian-born Australian citizens were arrested and charged with an espionage-related offence,' Mr Burgess said. 'Separately, I can confirm in 2022 a number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers were removed from this country. 'But Russia is by no means the only country we have to deal with. 'You would be genuinely shocked by the number and names of countries trying to steal our secrets. 'The obvious candidates are very active … but many other countries are also targeting anyone and anything that could give them a strategic or tactical advantage, including sensitive but unclassified information.' Mr Burgess revealed ASIO had disrupted 24 'major espionage and foreign interference' operations in the past three years alone. 'Nation states are spying at unprecedented levels, with unprecedented sophistication,' he said. 'ASIO is seeing more Australians targeted – more aggressively – than ever before.' While AUKUS and military technology secrets were targets, Australia's intellectual property and cutting edge research was also in the sights of foreign agents. ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said spies were targeting Australia's cutting edge research and technology as well as defence secrets. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman He said an overseas delegation visiting a 'sensitive Australian horticultural facility' snapped branches off a 'rare and valuable variety of fruit tree' in order to steal them. 'Almost certainly, the stolen plant material allowed scientists in the other country to reverse engineer and replicate two decades of Australian research and development,' he said. He said foreign intelligence services are 'proactive, creative and opportunistic' in their targets. 'In recent years, for example, defence employees travelling overseas have been subjected to covert room searches, been approached at conferences by spies in disguise and given gifts containing surveillance devices. 'Defence is alert to these threats and works closely with ASIO to counter them.'
News.com.au
27-07-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
‘Unprecedented' algae bloom disaster making SA beaches toxic here to stay, experts claim
An 'unprecedented' natural disaster that has killed thousands of marine creatures, sparked orders to stay out of the water, and gutted parts of the local tourism sector has scientists alarmed, with no sign of an end in sight. The Algae bloom parked up just off the coast of South Australia has persistently held its position inside the St Vincent Gulf since it was first officially reported in March, after visitors of the Waitpinga Beach on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula began reporting illness. The toxic bloom has killed hundreds of sea creatures, caused illness in humans and sparked orders for swimmers to stay out of affected water. Estimates vary on how many creatures have been killed by the bloom, but it is understood there have been recorded deaths among more than 200 different species of sea life. Even more alarmingly, there doesn't seem to be any respite in sight. Dr Nina Wootton, a Marine Scientist from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Adelaide, said tracking the outbreak of the Algae bloom was difficult, but it could have something to do with the Murray River flooding in 2022/23. 'Obviously there's a lot of run-off that goes into the Murray, and then this has potentially pushed some of these algae species out into the marine environment, and it's sort of just been sitting there dormant. And then when we see perfect conditions arise, it can then bloom,' she told NewsWire. 'Somehow this species has gotten there, and then we have a range of different environmental factors that have caused this perfect storm of events,' she said. 'When things are hot and still, (the algae) grow, and this species has just boomed because there's been nothing there to break it up naturally.' Although millions of dollars have been committed to clean up and research, Dr Wootton said the cure was ultimately in the hands of mother nature. 'The thing that's so hard is there's not really a solution to get rid of this bloom,' Dr Wootton said. 'The main way we're going to be able to do it is hopefully cross our fingers and toes that we have good weather conditions and we have some strong winter storms over the next couple of months that will break it up and eventually blow it off the coast. That's all we can really hope for now … to get rid of it naturally at least,' she said. 'It could be up to 18 months. Some scientists are predicting that we're going to continue to see deaths of animals for up to 18 months if we don't have these winter storms breaking it up.' University of Adelaide Microbial Ecologist Dr Christopher Keneally said even though 'you can't really see them,' algae blooms can have serious impacts on wildlife, and can even affect humans. 'Algae blooms have a massive impact on fish … they concentrate toxins – especially into shellfish – and cause a lot of damage,' he said. 'It's not as much of a problem for mammals like dolphins and human beings … but people in southern Australia have been noticing that there's a bit of eye irritation and throat and lung irritation that happens when they go out into the water when there's an algae bloom happening.' Dr Keneally stressed while we don't hear about it often, events like this are 'similar to a bushfire or other environmental catastrophes'. 'It can be quite scary when something like this happens, especially when you don't know what to expect … getting people used to the idea of it potentially happening in their own coastal waters is important when it comes to awareness.' 'The rapid mobilisation of Australia's research is going to be really important to forecasting these things and looking at mitigation in the future … we need to take action, or otherwise these things are going to become the new normal.' Shadow Water, Fisheries and Forestry and Emergency Management Minister Ross Cadell spoke to ABC Radio earlier this week about the emotional and economic impacts of algal blooms on local communities. 'You walk along the Ardrossan wharf and see garfish and King George whiting on the ground dying,' he said. 'You talk to the businesses and the Port Vincent gift shop is down (in sales) 15 per cent. 'The Stansbury caravan park, in the 48 hours before I got there, (had) 10-12 cancellations of November holidays because people are fearful of going in the water.' SA Premier Peter Malinauskas announced the Commonwealth government had provided a $14 million care package to South Australia which 'covers industry support, science and research, communications, community support and clean-up'. 'I want to thank the Commonwealth for their contribution … towards this effort,' he said 'We stand ready to deliver additional support if and when it is needed.'
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Invasive species undergoes mysterious change as it dominates Australia
Almost two centuries after rabbits were set free across Australia's fragile landscape, scientists are working to understand a mysterious change that has occurred in their physical nature. Oddly, the rabbits released from 1859 onwards have grown bigger than their European counterparts. The difference was noted in new research led by the University of Adelaide's Associate Professor Emma Sherratt, which studied the body sizes of 912 rabbits from around the world. 'We found Australian feral rabbits are quite a lot larger than European rabbits. We intend to find out why,' she said. It's hypothesised the changes could be due to "relaxed functional demands" on rabbits in Australia, because they face fewer threats from large predators. Physical developments have been observed in other feral animals released in Australia which give them an ecological advantage over native wildlife. In 2023, the Invasive Species Council noted that cane toads are changing in size and appearance as they adapt to different regions in Australia. As they expand west through Kakadu and into the Kimberly, cane toads at the edge of the "invasion front" have longer legs than those following them, allowing them to conquer new territory quickly. When you exclude the direct impact of humans, feral animals are responsible for more extinctions than anything else in Australia. Researchers are desperately working to give native species an edge by either genetically engineering them to avoid disease, or protecting them within dedicated sanctuaries. Native marsupials like the greater bilby once occupied up to 80 per cent of Australia's mainland. For thousands of years, throughout the night people would have seen the land teeming with the tiny creatures. Since European settlement, small marsupial numbers have dwindled, and conservationists have turned to protecting them inside fenced reserves. At the same time, feral rabbit numbers have exploded from an estimated 13 in 1859, to 200 million today, and scars from their warrens can be seen across the landscape. Meanwhile fewer than 10,000 greater bilbies survive. The researchers also examined rabbit skull shapes because changes in appearance indicate how they interact with their environment and what they feed on. 'Understanding how animals change when they become feral and invade new habitats helps us to predict what effect other invasive animals will have on our environment, and how we may mitigate their success,' Sherratt said. The work also included comparing the physical differences between rabbits that were raised for meat and fur, with wild animals. They found domesticated rabbit populations often didn't revert to their wild form after they were released into the environment. New detailed images released in fight to protect Australia from invasive pests Urgent plea to drivers after shocking dashcam footage emerges Call to stay vigilant as 'super' biosecurity threat spotted spreading over border 'While you might expect that a feral animal would revert to body types seen in wild populations, we found that feral rabbits' body size and skull-shape range is somewhere between wild and domestic rabbits, but also overlaps with them in large parts,' Sherratt said. 'Because the range is so variable and sometimes like neither wild nor domestic, feralisation in rabbits is not morphologically predictable if extrapolated from the wild or the domestic stock.' The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society. Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
RNZ News
25-06-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
World's only known eyeless wasp discovered mummified in Nullarbor cave
By Peter de Kruijff , ABC The mummified remains of a male blind cave wasp found underground in the Nullarbor. Photo: Supplied/Jess Marsh Jess Marsh had spent 45 minutes crawling and twisting through the claustrophobic limestone tunnels of the Nullarbor Plain when she first saw it. Perched on the wall of a cave chamber was the almost perfect mummified remains of small, reddish wasp about 2 centimetres long with translucent wings. Its stand-out feature? It had no eyes. "This wasp is the only wasp in the world that is known to have adapted like that to a cave life," Dr Marsh said, an entomologist and arachnologist - an insect and spider expert - at the University of Adelaide. "The first specimen was actually climbing up the wall of the cave... like they'd been freeze-dried." University of Adelaide entomologist and arachnologist Jess Marsh collecting samples in a Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner The preserved insect, yet to be taxonomically described, was one of the crowning discoveries from a research expedition in April with cavers from the Australian Speleological Federation (ASF). Eleven caves on the Western Australia side of the 200,000 square kilometre Nullarbor region were examined in a biological survey, funded by the Australian Research Council and the Hermon Slade Foundation. The caves were selected based on previous sightings of underground critters by cave-exploring citizen scientists. ASF president Andrew Stempel said the trip, which found specimens at five of the sites, had been an "incredible" collaboration connecting caver knowledge with expert scientists. "It took many years and many cavers and a lot of hard yards," he said. The wasp was found in a cave that contains passages that run for about 10 kilometres, which had previously been mapped out by scientists. It wasn't the only remains the researchers found either. The cave was full of thousands of mummified bodies of spiders, cockroaches, centipedes and other insects, preserved thanks to the salty cave conditions. A dead cockroach and centipede found preserved in a salty Nullarbor cave. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner and Jess Marsh Dr Marsh said when she first locked eyes on the site she was captured by its otherworldly beauty. "It's not like anything I've ever seen before," she said. "[It had] the most amazing cave decorations I've ever seen, so stalactites, stalagmites and huge long salt straws [thin pillars of salt that sway in the cave breeze]. "It's like this weird world frozen in time that's completely dominated by invertebrates... some of the invertebrates have died almost mid-action." No living critters remain because of some sort of invertebrate world-ending cataclysm that occurred an unknown number of years ago. What excited Dr Marsh was the potential relationship between the blind arachnids and the wasp, which she thought was from the spider-hunting family called Pompilidae. Hundreds of dead invertebrates were found in a Nullarbor cave including a concentrated group of spiders in a spot dubbed "party rock". Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner "It's a really interesting story if they've both evolved to a cave-adapted lifestyle where they've lost their eyes independently but are linked through parasitism," she said. Collection manager at the Australian Museum - not part of the recent expedition - Matt Shaw said finding a wasp and spiders with regressed features was fantastic for science. "Because as [Charles] Darwin pointed out... regressed animals including cave animals were an important source of evidence for understanding evolution," he said. The exact age of the invertebrates in the mummy mausoleum was yet to be analysed, but Dr Marsh said they were so well preserved 'they could have died yesterday'". A dead Troglodiplura spider specimen could possibly be a new species. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner Elsewhere on the trip, the expedition found some creatures that were still kicking, including two species of eyeless spiders. Both could fill up the palm of your hand but are incredibly different. One, which hangs underneath a web weaved between rocks is believed to be from the genus Tartarus, named after the prison for titans in Greek mythology. The second is large, hairy and probably part of the Troglodiplura genus, but distantly related to tarantulas, funnel webs and trapdoor spiders. "We don't know yet if it's a new species or if it's one of the already described ones," Dr Marsh said. There are five spiders in Troglodiplura, including four that were described only a few years ago from tiny fragments found in museum collections. Both Tartarus and Troglodiplura spiders have only been found on the Nullarbor. And there is a belief among arachnologists that some Nullarbor spider species may only be found in single caves rather than multiple sites. Dr Marsh said the latest trip, along with other research, challenged the idea the region was not particularly special for biodiversity. "The number and the diversity of species that may be surviving and living in the caves on the Nullarbor is actually much higher than we we initially thought," she said. A live web-weaving blind spider likely to be a member of the Tartarus genus. Photo: Supplied/Steve Milner With the growing knowledge of underground species comes a greater awareness of potential threats. In caves accessible to mammals, Dr Marsh said invasive foxes proposed a big threat to blind spiders. A site with living arachnids from the most recent trip had fox scat that contained spider fangs. "The risk of extinction for a lot of those [underground] species through development, impact by humans, changes to water movement across the landscape... is really very high," she said. While the South Australia side of the Nullarbor is in the process of being made a World Heritage site, the WA side is not. All of the recent cave surveys were done within an area ear-marked for the largest proposed green energy project in Australia. The 70 gigawatt Western Green Energy Hub would see about 3,000 turbines and six million solar panels installed across 20,000sqkm of land. The project has come under scrutiny from cavers concerned about potential impacts to the unique cave systems. Project chief executive Raymond Macdonald said less than five percent of the total surface area would be impacted, and that the company was currently mapping a directory of caves, sink holes and karst feature locations. "This new accuracy will ensure that significant features are totally avoided when selecting infrastructure locations," he said. The project's management is currently in discussion with state and federal regulators about what environmental studies will be needed as the project proposal is reviewed. An Indigenous land-use agreement is also being negotiated with the area's Traditional Owners, the Mirning. A WA Mirning People Aboriginal Corporation spokesperson said the whole ecosystem in the Nullarbor was significant. "Our priority is always to protect the environment as a whole, while placing particular emphasis on rare and endangered species," they said. - ABC
